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Missoula says it doesn’t deserve listing among nation’s "worst" cities for job losses

While the picture isn’t rosy and there’s more sussing out to be done, Mayor Engen said he doesn’t want Missoula painted close to "the worst" if it isn’t so: "It’s important for us to make sure that if folks are portraying something as fact, that it’s factual. And in this case, it doesn’t appear that it’s factual."

Let’s face it: No one wants to land on a "worst of" list.

So when Missoula ended up being listed this month as America’s second-worst city for job losses, Mayor John Engen was among the first to raise a skeptical eyebrow. Data seem to show the skeptics’ instincts were spot on.

"While we certainly have unemployed folks, we’re not a hotbed of unemployment," Engen said Thursday.

A story published Jan. 4 on MSN.CareerBuilder.com named the Garden City among 15 U.S. metros with the greatest job losses from July through October 2009. It noted a drop of 4.2 percent, citing data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Bureau economist Linda Nickisch said Thursday parts of the story’s opening narrative pull information directly from an agency news release. But not everything on the ensuing list of cities and related data matches bureau figures.

By KEILA SZPALLER of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_b0b0712c-06f6-11df-a990-001cc4c03286.html

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